brave rainstorm
by angels entwined
Summary: Her home is meant to be a cloudy world, it seems; the beam of her mother's fake smile will never be sunlight. — Thalia and family, for Jess.


_a/n;_ Okay, I know I'm painfully behind on GGE14 (I've rewritten this like four times, what is my life) and I really am working on it, sorry. By the way, I disregarded a bunch of canon details (although they're mostly minor), because I'm a terrible person. Feel free to point them out anyway. I haven't read PJO in months. I hope you enjoy. (:

* * *

Thalia hates looking in a mirror—when she sees her own reflection, she despises herself so much she chokes on it. This _piece of glass _is treated like her everything; Mother grips her shoulders, crimson-painted nails digging in like talons, and forces her to take herself in. Her worth is not defined by this, she snarls back at the woman, and kicks it over with a hard thump.

It shatters on the floor into a thousand glittering pieces that twist and distort, blending the family behind it into one patchwork doll of blonde curls and lipstick that wasn't stitched together quite right.

Mother screams and sends her sprawling; her palms hit the floor first, catching on a sharp piece of glass and slicing the skin open. She's fortunate that's all that hurts, but the sting and the harsh words send her spiraling away from reality. Thalia thinks dazedly of the smeared makeup she was forced to put on, blurring as tears run down her cheeks, but her glare is still defiant as she pulls herself up, careful not to step on the mess, and makes her way out the door.

The maid sweeps up the pieces into a dustpan later on and as it is every day, the floor is scrubbed clean enough the little girl can see her reflection. She doesn't want to.

* * *

When Jason is born, she knows she should either hate him or love him—be resentful of Mother's attention being stolen so easily away from her by a drooling, crying baby, or else be mature and tend to him like a good little girl, but Thalia was never a good little girl. Either way, he's a mere device to her; if Mother's attention is stolen away from her, _good. _She knows she's too young to be thinking such things, but she's not stupid, and she knows her mother's attention isn't something she should want.

Thalia hopes he'll be the child she never was, wishes on all the shooting stars that pass her bedroom windows that he'll grow up nice and pretty and strong, something the reporters can coo over and gossip when he begins to date girls just as pretty as he is, something she's not interested in at all. She gets dirt tangled in the curls her maid spends an hour yanking a comb through in the mornings, her knees scabbed over from every time she tripped when she was running across the sidewalk, and when she walks through the door she tracks mud everywhere.

But babies grow slowly, and that's what makes her frustrated. There's nothing but the hints of a blonde fuzz on his head and bright blue eyes, not enough for anyone to squeal over. Maybe a normal mother, but no reporter wants to hold a senseless, snotty infant.

She screams at him in his crib, knuckles white as she grips the bars, tells him to get big fast, you stupid little thing, don't you know _how? _Babies are dumb, everyone says, but she'd never thought it was like this, only that they can't do things like long division or read chapter books. Apparently Jason isn't like that. Especially when babies are supposed to cry all the time and he never does, only stares up at her with those electric blue eyes neither of them seem to get from Mother.

* * *

She's not very old when her maid is fired for something or other, probably a ridiculously tiny slight her mother had taken offense to, and they're still searching for a new one when one night the woman in question comes staggering home drunk leaning on a stranger's shoulder.

It's one AM, and Thalia's stayed up late before, more in a fit of rebellion than anything else, but always her maid had drawn her aside and locked her in her room and she couldn't resist her pillow for long. Now, though, Jason's over at her aunt's house and she feels something verging on loneliness—she has no friends, it's too hard to make them when people whose families have the same status as hers seem to be made of bubbly foam and giggles and the ones she's actually interested in her mother pulls her forcefully away from. She leans against the balcony, no one there to stop her from climbing it, when she hears the crash downstairs.

Thalia tiptoes downstairs and sees a glass full of wine knocked over, crimson liquid spilling on the tile, the glint of moonlight bouncing off broken glass. Her mother laughs wildly, her hair disheveled, and clings to the man.

Immediately, the little girl knows this man is different—her mother has come home with men before, ones that leave headlines with her name splattered s on the newspapers, and when she sees them, she always runs away if her maid hasn't already taken her to bed. It results in nothing but the sound of moans and wet skin slapping against skin, and it's something that shouldn't be for her eyes.

But this one is different—he's tall, imposing, and unlike the others, he's clearly not drunk. His face is a blank wall as he faces Mother opposite the counter as she tries to pour them more wine from a bottle off to the side.

"You should come back to us," Mother slurs, her laugh bouncing off the walls, ringing high and shrill. There's something sharp beneath it, an edge of pain, that Thalia doesn't expect; these kind of people mean nothing to her, just another away to get attention. "I miss you. You should see Jason, he's growing into a good little boy. . ."

The little girl curls her lip as she flattens herself against the wall so no one sees her. Jason isn't a disappointment the way she is; he smiles and gurgles at all the guests, doesn't scream or try to wriggle away from their grasps. This is the part where she escapes back to her room, disinterested, but she keeps her eyes glued to the man.

It's at that moment he turns his head, which had previously been cloaked in shadow, and in that face, she sees her own eyes.

* * *

It's a few days later when she gets a new maid; she's a wisp of a thing, with gentle fingers deft with her hair and a voice that doesn't seem to say anything except _yes ma'am _and _no ma'am_. Fortunately, she also seems to try to restrain Thalia less, and the girl runs outside with the braids she's been forced into trailing behind her.

The sky is dark with low-hanging clouds as she dodges the puddles of yesterday's rainstorm and her feet squish against the mud, hidden by blades of grass that brush her ankles. They've set Jason up in a stroller at the edge of the sidewalk, and she grips the back of it and pushes it along, humming brightly as the wheels turn and turn while she walks down the street.

She hasn't asked her mother about the strange man—she's managed to come to the conclusion that he's her father, and Jason's as well, but that's it. There's a thousand questions jammed in the spaces between her teeth; they're tasteless in her mouth, taking up needless space, and rest on her tongue until she feels like she can't breathe. Just to be safe, she takes in a lungful of polluted city air as she turns the corner, and—

By some miracle, as if some other force is pushing her, the stroller veers off to the side and comes to a rest in the grass. Instead, she's the one who slams into the woman who must be twice her height and scrapes her knees _(again) _as she goes down.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she mutters; she's not one to go out of her way to be rude to strangers who she knows nothing about, and she glances up, scrabbling to collect the fallen things in the woman's purse, now scattered across the sidewalk.

When she glances up, all the pain in her knees vanishes, and her breath is stolen away.

The woman is beautiful, although she's seen supermodels who could give her a run for her money, nothing impressive there—although Thalia notes she's wearing two braids, just like the little girl—but the fierceness in her eyes and the distinctly regal air about her is otherworldly.

"It's no problem," coos the woman, bending down to help gather her own things. She zips up her purse, but not before Thalia catches a glimpse of the contents, and her eyes widen in alarm. Her own name, and Jason's, is written across a scrap of paper, and is that _her birth certificate?_ "What's your name?"

"Thalia," she admits, not willing to give away her last name; people will recognize it immediately and begin to bombard her with questions, (_the _Thalia Grace?) and she doesn't like that.

Despite the omission, the woman's eyes light up as if she recognizes her anyway. The little girl hardly looks like she does whenever a picture of her shows up on the Internet, with her skinned knees and no makeup and the mud on the soles of her shoes, but who knows. "Grace?"

Thalia nods, ever so briefly, and expects the questions to start raining down, but the woman doesn't have that fascinated look that's so familiar, or the awed one. It's a one of smug confirmation, and she doesn't like it. "Your mother is. . .a wonderful woman, I'm sure."

"Not really," she responds bitterly, not catching the sarcasm. She pulls Jason's stroller out of the grass; miraculously, he seems to have fallen asleep, although nowadays that's really all he does, so it's no surprise. She looks down at the blood and peeled skin on her legs and fights back tears, replacing it with anger.

(Good little girls aren't supposed to hate their mothers.) _(So?)_ _  
_

The woman merely raises an eyebrow rather than reprimanding her. "Is that your little brother? He looks like he'll grow up to be handsome, I'm sure." Before she can reply, she leans down to Thalia. "Miss Grace," she says softly, "I have some information for you. Do you know who your father is?"

* * *

Thalia kicks the door open, ignoring the fact she's just stubbed a toe—_what an idiot you are, like always_—and finds her mother, slumped over the kitchen counter with a glass of wine dangerously close to the edge, half-drained. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Hm?"

She hates her mother in that moment she almost chokes, the defiance and anger blazing inside her until she wants to put her stick-thin wrists (_you are only beautiful if you are thin i don't want to be beautiful_) around the woman's throat and squeeze. "I know everything," she snarls, her fists curled up so she doesn't do exactly that, even though it'll be useless. Her maid will drag her away and lock her up in her bedroom; her mother will hit her; Jason, who's still strapped in the stroller by the door, will start crying and she will be forgotten. "I know who my father is."

"Thalia, I don't have time for this," mumbles Mother, clearly drunk, and starts to head up the stairs, leaving the glass of wine on the counter.

"You've had all the time in the world for this!" the eight-year-old screams, her vision hazy with red. She runs after the woman, feet pounding against the bare floor. "You've had _eight years_ to tell me!"

She ends up in the older woman's bedroom; Mother is muttering something about needing to go to bed, that they could talk about this later, which meant _never_. When she tries to climb into bed, Thalia pulls the covers off of it so there's nothing but the mattress and a thin sheet beneath, then yanks at her hair.

It's too much.

Ms. Grace turns around and shoves her so hard she slides across the wooden floor and crashes into a chair, seeing stars as a bruise begins to form. The other woman, the one on the street, has bandaged her knees like a _real _mother instead of leaving it to her maid, but it's too many injuries for her. This time, Mother tries to escape by striding furiously to the balcony, but Thalia merely gets up again and sucks in a breath before chasing after her.

It's raining, the girl notices; it's not a drizzle like yesterday, enough to leave the dirt squishy rather than dry and the grass damp, but a full-on rainstorm—the sight of lightning blinds her momentarily, but she plods on as raindrops gather on the floor. "Why didn't you tell me?" she shouts after her mother, who's leaning toward the railing.

Her mother turns to her and looks lost, still caught in the trance that alcohol leaves her in. "What are you?"

"I am Thalia," she snaps, purposely leaving off the _Grace. _"Daughter of Zeus." In the old stories of kings and queens and a game of thrones, they'd rattle off title after title without blinking, but she has only one. It's all she needs. When her mother doesn't reply, she adds, "Hera told me. The woman who should've been my _real _mother."

(Because Hera is kind, and Zeus' true wife, and she's the goddess of marriage and family and doubtless knows so much more about that than her actual mother does.)

It twists inside her, deep and longing and angry at fate, but then something in her mother's eyes wakes up and she grabs her daughter and turns her around to face the balcony railing and the city skyline beyond it. Mother's _laughing. _"You think _Hera _would've been a good mother?" It's wild and unnatural and shrill, just like from that night the man who was actually Zeus came to her home. "Let me tell you something about Hera, _daughter,"_ she says with a cruel twist of her mouth, and unlike that night, she's completely in control and knows what she's saying.

"Hera's a _bitch._" Thalia flinches away instinctively, knowing that's a bad word to say when you're eight and there's some lines even she won't cross. Because it's not a thing that's forbidden in only her household, it's forbidden in everyone's, because eight-year-olds shouldn't swear no matter who their parents are. "Hera will _never _have children. She thinks she's so high and mighty, so much more beautiful and worthy to be at her husband's side, and she's jealous of me because at the same time I'm still better. Because I've given _him _children." The way she says _him, _it sounds like it ought to be capitalized.

Thunder roars in the distance.

"And now she wants to take them away." There's another laugh, and a nasty gleam in her eyes. "You know, I'd be perfectly happy if she took you away, but instead, mere months from now, my baby Jason will be gone. The one I want. She takes everything, because she can't get it otherwise."

"Then get rid of me!" Thalia shrieks back, even as her eyes sting—whether the water on her face is from the rain or from tears even though she's not supposed to cry (_it looks bad for the cameras, don't do it until you can cry properly without your face turning tomato red and snot getting everywhere, dear_), she doesn't know.  
"I don't want you, either! I'd rather be with _anyone _but you!" She dreams of flying, for a moment, of flying up to the Mount Olympus Hera had spoken of, the magnificent and regal place her father resides.

The dream is shattered when Ms. Grace grabs her wrists, and she tries to twist away because her grasp is uncomfortable and pinches her skin, but she's only a little girl and Mother's breath smells foul and she's hauling her over the railing, and—

"What are you doing?"

Thalia loses track of her senses, claws frantically at the arms gripping her own even though her mind screams it means nothing but death in the end. She can't even cry now, her eyes unblinking as the rain floats down like parachutes and slides down her face. She can't even breathe anymore, and this time, she feels like she's the one whose throat has hands wrapped around it.

"Getting rid of you," replies Mother, but _this woman is not her mother. _If she hadn't been born a daughter of the king of the gods and was only a normal child with a normal family and maybe even siblings she felt like she was supposed to about, either jealous or nurturing, instead of only a kind of apathy that has grown into terror at the idea of losing him but not really liking him, either. "Maybe with only one child," she says, tilting her head and not seeming to notice as blood drips down her arms, "Hera won't feel the need to take everything away, if I've already got so little."

Thalia lets out a half-gasp, half-sob that wrenches itself from her throat, and she knows she should be crying and begging for mercy and blubbering everywhere like a normal eight year old—they're four stories up and she's _terrified _of heights—but she's not, she's _done_ with eight years of neglect and abuse and slammed doors and distorted reflections. She would never purposely end her life, but at this point, does it matter? The sound is almost relief._  
_

"Fine," she says, gritting her teeth, but the words come out easily anyway. "_Then let go._"

The woman blinks, clearly not having expected her to sound. . .so not helpless, almost like she's picked this on purpose, but her blood-red lips stretch into a smile of satisfaction as she lets go.

Thalia's scream rips its way out of her unintentionally—she never meant to scream, she was meant to be like a fallen angel, its wings broken and crumpled when she hit the ground, instead of sounding like, well, an eight-year-old girl scared senseless.

But her instinct acts first, and she's barely done screaming when she finds herself floating less than ten feet above the ground, face down. Tears streak down her face now and her braids are wet with the rain, and she's. . .she's _floating, _not a broken heap on the ground. She wills herself to fly upwards, and it's with a mighty jerk and a scream that she gains fifteen feet before dropping five.

A few minutes later, she's level with the balcony, then flies over it, even though she knows she looks ridiculous. Grabbing the railing for support, she drops down and lands feet first on the ground, only to glance up and see her mother.

She didn't know what she expected, but Ms. Grace is sobbing, curled up in a ball as the storm ruins her perfectly curled hair, disheveled as it already was, and blood oozes out of the marks out of her arms more visibly now. The way she cries is not pretty, like you'd think, not something in a movie that people's hearts would be moved by; there is snot everywhere and it's like she's the same age as Thalia.

"I—I'm so sorry," weeps the woman. Thalia stays a safe few feet away from her, and lightning lashes out across the sky as she narrows her eyes in suspicion. "I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry. I love you. I. . ." She dissolves into tears again, her forehead pressed against the sliding glass door, as she doesn't dare to look at her daughter. "I almost took everything away from myself. You're all I have, when Jason will be gone." By then, her bawling clouds out the rest, and Thalia only manages to catch a few phrases that make her flinch—_worthless—it's a wonder I think I'm better than her if I'm willing to fling my child down a mountain, too—I should be the one who was dropped—_and she's not quite sure what they mean, but they aren't any good.

Except that her mother tried to kill her.

Her heart aches at the reminder as she builds up stone walls around it, no castles in her head anymore (if there ever were any), and she lifts her face up to the sky as she walks past the woman.

* * *

Two years later, she stands by a campfire with a pair of scissors and a mirror. The boy across from her raises an eyebrow in curiosity as she picks up the scissors with one hand and a compact mirror in the other. "You sure about this?" The duo had looked similar that way, could pass off as siblings, if they needed a cover story, but this could take that away. He takes a breath. "If you're insecure about this, there's nothing wrong with your hair, okay? It looks great no matter what."

Her eyes water a little as she raises the scissors. She thinks of her mother, sneering, telling her she'd never be pretty enough and why couldn't she try harder, not scrub off the makeup her maid had so carefully applied? "Thanks," she says, her voice catching on the word. "No one's ever told me that before. But it's not about that."

_It's about what I see when I look in a mirror, _she thinks to herself. They'd obtained it when a girl left her purse at a park bench, and taken a few dollars in cash as well. As far as the daughter of Zeus is concerned, she's lucky they didn't take anything else. _My mother. My brother. _(Thalia hates looking in a mirror—when she sees her own reflection, she despises herself so much she chokes on it.) There's nothing of her father except her eyes, but she can't remove those and contacts aren't something easily stolen, and besides, she can't hide who she is by running away. She knows that now.

He takes the scissors as she observes herself in the mirror and begins to cut away the blonde curls, jagged and choppy like she'd requested despite his curious stare. "You have beautiful hair," he'd said. "And you'll always be like that. I don't want to treat this like it's nothing."

As he cuts, slowly and methodically no matter what she'd asked, she picks up something she'd stolen yesterday—a packet of black hair dye—and rolls it around in her fingers.


End file.
